First, may I ask, do most of you have a number of large LUNs and you just arbitrarily deploy multiple VMs to a LUN? In the past we've found we got the best performance on our old Clariion by creating a separate LUN for any machine that was very busy at all. We are now on a VNX and I'm not sure if the same would hold true, but we've stuck with that way of doing things.
The reason I ask is creating a new LUN for each VM seems to make the task of automation harder because now I have to automate that piece as well.
What I would like to be able to automate is.
Create a LUN
Deploy a VM template and be able to create disks of the size I want for the specific purpose, not the same size disk every time.
Add additional drives if needed
Install VMWare Tools
Set IP address, computer name, DNS, etc.
Install Symantec Endpoint Protection
Run Windows Updates to install all critical updates
I think that's about it.
I have been searching and have not been able to find a way to do anything except deploy a template and set the computer specific info, but not resize the drive or add additional drives. I'm currently not even using templates, but using converter to convert what would normally be a template to a VM due to the drive resizing restriction.
Maybe I'm going about this all wrong and making things harder than they need to be, so feel free to tell me. But I feel like this would be what most people do when deploying machines.
Thanks!
Brian